We have recently perused a series of sermons by different ministers of the gospel on the subject of Christian Science, some of whom have many pleasant things to say of it. Others are inclined to be somewhat harsh. Most of these discourses make many concessions to the claims of Christian Science, some of them being even generous in this direction. Were it not that they undertake later to explain these concessions away on mistaken grounds arising from a misapprehension of what Christian Science really is, there would be slight room for objection on the part of Christian Scientists.
One gentleman says he recognizes many of the adherents of Christian Science as devout Christians whose beautiful living wins his admiration, and that he has dear personal friends among them. While this gentleman plainly shows his unfamiliarity with Christian Science healing, he nevertheless admits enough to make inconsistent any attempt to decry a system that produces such results as he concedes.
We have perused also a symposium of the views of Christian Science by ten eminent ministers in different parts of the country. In this symposium we read that a religious movement which within a quarter of a century has won many thousands of adherents without the slightest attraction in the way of elaborate ritual or familiar creed, is worthy of careful study; that when that movement has drawn many of its followers from evangelical churches, including persons of unquestioned intelligence and piety, such study becomes a duty; and if the new teaching be proved to contain elements of truth which Christian people have ignored or neglected, then "we must correct our practice to square with the truth, whether the truth be new or old."
